Fast fungi

Carl Zimmer has been blogging about some seriously fast fungi -- like 180,000 g acceleration fast!

Briefly, Nicholas Money has used a 250,000 frames-a-second (ie, damn fast) camera to record fungi shooting their spores. His recordings show that spores can shoot as far as 2.5 meters, are fired at 55 miles per hour, and experience acceleration of up to 180,000 g. Money calls this “the fastest flight in nature.”

The video, which he put to opera music, is very impressive. The good stuff starts at around 19 seconds.



Money's full published PLoS One paper is available here.